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A red welt burns on his face, raw flesh hissing as it makes contact with the cold wind outside. His Master had just left, cursing about his awful form and everything else wrong with him. He readies his sword stance again—ignoring the lancing pain in his ribs—and attempts to follow exactly what Yoshihide would have done. It is never good enough. It will never be good enough. That is what Valencina would say over and over again, drilling into his head that he is nothing more than a worthless copy of the Nursefathers’ Yoshihide.
What perfection, he thinks blankly, would this Yoshihide even be like? He’s seen the warped flesh on the face of the Index’s Nursefather, the way the Dihui Star only ever stares blankly into the void, letting Ren and his cold elegance speak for her, the way Valencina must always degrade her even when putting her on a pedestal for him. He slashes unconsciously, catching a drop of rain.
Then another.
He slashes again and again, rain and cold freezing through until he thinks his hands will fall off, and he practices more. He has nothing else to do, nothing else to entertain besides the fact that he needs to be better. For if he is not, then he will—
“Yo!” A voice, high and loud, rings out right next to him. He instinctively prepares to parry any incoming blow from Valencina before he realizes… this is not his master.
Kira waves at him, nudging his sword away with her bare hands. He recoils as lightly as he can, feeling the surge of pain the mark on his face brings as he is snapped back into reality.
“What is it that you need?” He isn’t one to mince words, but he responds almost clinically, tone laced with a smudge of impatience he never knew he had. He wants to remain composed, in the hopes that he can train again in peace, but the rush of the rain around him and Kira’s presence make that feel unlikely.
She sighs, overdramatically fashioning her face in a way he’s only ever seen on Sir Matthias, and makes a pout at him, childish as ever. “Why is everyone here so boooring?!” She only wants a reaction out of him, to show that he’s listening, but when he doesn’t respond instantly, she steamrolls on anyway. “I wish Papa wasn’t so busy… I mean, really, who’s stupid enough to actually get into the Books?”
He pauses, remembering the few people having been tortured by the Middle for the barest of slights, and doubts her words greatly.
“Aw, you’re making the same face as you do when Ms. Val says that you’ll never be—”
“If this is all you have to say— Please leave me alone.”
His voice feels so faint and foreign to him; he wants to forget about this entire exchange and continue practicing, even as the rain soaks through his ponytail and drips down to the marks upon his worthless self, pouring from the bleak sky. He doesn’t particularly notice what happens to Kira—she’s never written in that Book of hers, much preferring to talk endlessly about whatever may interest her—and he draws his sword once more, always desperately clinging onto a long-forgotten dream.